Webster defines “bluff” as “to deter or frighten by pretense or mere show of strength; to deceive; to feign.”

It’s not surprising Barack Obama likes the word. The real Obama is the master of bluff, the dean of deception. Protected and unvetted by mainstream media, he bluffed his way into the White House. Only a master showman like Phineas Barnum could have hornswoggled the press and the public so well.

On issues like the national debt, Patriot Act, executive orders, wars and health care, 2008 presidential candidate Obama promised critical review and reform. He opposed single-payer universal health care in debates. He vowed to cut the federal deficit in half, attack overspending, and add robust oversight to the Patriot Act. He promised ethics and transparency. He blasted the overuse of executive orders by George W. Bush and pledged to reverse many of Bush’s repugnant actions. Obama promised; Obama lied. He doubled down on Bush. It was a good bluff.

The record shows: President Obama has already issued 111 executive orders, and revoked only two Bushian executive orders. He reauthorized Bush’s despotic Patriot Act until 2015 and signed the NDAA, which authorizes indefinite detention of American citizens on American soil without due process of law or even access to a lawyer. As to war, Obama’s disastrous term of office is underlain by a river of blood including the lives of many innocents. He has launched military strikes against non-hostile nations without a congressional nod. He never met a drone he didn’t like. Fiscally, Obama oversees annual trillion dollar plus deficits. He has borrowed a record $5 trillion in just three years and increased the federal debt limit under his watch from $10.6 trillion to $16.4 trillion. National debt now exceeds U.S. GDP. Dictatorial Obamacare is just another name for government takeover of health care and the bludgeoning of economic freedom. The Congressional Budget Office now projects the national debt under Obama’s policies, including Obamacare, will rise to $21.665 trillion by 2022.

In 2006, then-Sen. Obama called raising the federal debt limit “a failure of leadership” that is “shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.” Later, it was President Obama who heaped unconscionable levels of additional debt and “the burden of bad choices” onto those same children and grandchildren. With an accommodating Federal Reserve, it’s not difficult to undermine a great nation by destroying its full faith and credit through an orgy of debt. Obama couldn’t wait for the chance to have at it.

Obama views the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Congress as impediments to sweeping control. He cunningly uses government agencies to browbeat and intimidate the populace, suppress domestic opposition, fatten cronies and stifle dissent. “Fast and Furious,” Solyndra, IRS attacks on tea parties, perverted TSA Nazis, NDAA, government food police harassing 4-year-olds. These are just a few of the more visible manifestations of the Obama shtick. Imagine the corruption, malfeasance, coercion and scheming that plays out in his administration behind the scenes as the mainstream media sleeps.

Now there is demonstrable evidence supporting “probable cause” that Obama created a phony birth certificate and forged Selective Service documents. These are felonies that could nullify Obama’s presidency. He uses a Social Security number that reportedly flunks the government’s E-Verify program. He may have even tampered with the National Archives to remove incriminating evidence, or suborned Hawaiian state officials that maintain birth records.

Obama’s bluff of the century has been facilitated by the slobbering sycophants in the mainstream media who, by boosting and excusing a dangerous con man, have lost all objectivity and discredited their profession. Trust has been shattered. A lazy and servile Fourth Estate becomes an easy tool, a malleable Fifth Column. After all, monopoly of power by a would-be tyrant is easier got if he comes to the board armed with well-honed cheating skills, wads of cash from opaque sources and plenty of “Get out of jail free” cards, while meretricious referees obediently look the other way.